Is your work a process? Every day, what
do you do? Do you have routine assignments that you need to perform? If you do,
then your work should be a process.
A "Business Process" is a way of automating all of the routines that occur in your work; it defines steps to
take, inputs to respond to, and the appropriate actions to take for any given
decision.
I wear a lot of hats in the course of
my work: analyst, marketer, blogger, developer, and so forth. Every hat
requires different routines, and in order to get the best results with each
position, I define processes and subsequently follow them.
For instance, each
time I author a blog entry for The SmartDraw Blog I follow a process where I
perform the same tasks in the same order: pick a topic, a title, write the
body, put in some images, check to make sure the title still fits, proofread,
and so forth.
The Benefits of
Business Processes
ITtoolbox has a great post covering the benefits of BPM (Business Process
Management,) but I'd like to take the opportunity to share the benefits of defining
a business process that I've experienced:
- More
Predictable Results
- By implementing a standard process for your routines you make the outcomes of
your work more predictable. Think about it. If you follow the same steps every
time you're faced with a routine problem then your outcomes will, in fact, also
become routine.
- Measurable
Quality
- When you have a standard process which produces predictable results then you
can effectively quantify and measure the quality of the results you produce;
when you don't follow a process and the results are unpredictable then the task
of measuring the quality of your output becomes virtually impossible.
- Easier
to Train New Employees - Having a standard business process
reduces the complexity of training new employees significantly, simply because
you already have a tested, proven process that produces quality results when
followed.
Organizing Your Business'
Routines into Processes is Beneficial Exercise in Itself
The act of defining a business process
is in itself, extremely helpful, as it allows you to uncover the flaws in your
current modus operandi and helps you refine your business methods without the
unpredictable costs and lengthy duration of trial and error.
The easiest way to model a business
process is with a flow chart.
I'm going to use this blog post as an
example of a routine activity that can be improved using business processes and
flow charts.
I'll start off my flow chart by drawing
how I'd write a blog entry without using a process.
Well... That doesn't seem very
organized, does it? Given that all of the actual labor is compacted
into a single step, it appears as though I need to improve my process!
I'd start by breaking down my current
single activity (writing the blog entry) and breaking it down into smaller
components.
A small improvement; I've managed to
derive a sequence of steps to perform, but this still isn't sufficient, as it
doesn't tell me anything about the inputs
that influence my decisions and actions taken.
Now we're getting somewhere. My blog
producing process is starting to take into account all of the additional
concerns and checks that affect the quality of my blog entries. For the sake of
succinctness I'm going to cut off my process development here, but you get
the idea.
Take a look at my final yes/no decision
in this flow chart. My original blog authoring process didn't require me to
verify that body of my blog entry cohered with my title by the time I was done
writing it, so in theory I could produce a blog entry with an entirely
irrelevant title using my original "process."
If I conform to my
final, developed process, then the outcomes of my blogging efforts will be more
predictable and I will be able to measure the quality of my output with a
greater degree of precision than was previously available.
Really, there is no reason not to
incorporate processes into your business activities; they make it easier to
train new employees, help you uncover errors in your current routines, help
make activity outcomes more predictable, and enable you to effectively measure
the quality of your output.
Learn More About Creating & Drawing Business Processes
If you'd like to see how easy it is to map your business' routines into actual business processes then watch our flowcharting screencast "How to Map a Business Process with SmartDraw."
Also, if you'd like to play around with the diagram that I used in this example, you can download a free trial of SmartDraw and open the example file below.
[Example] Flow Chart - Basic Blogging Process - Step 1.sdr
